Friday, January 13, 2012 - 10:13am
In an ideal world, if we were writing this up as a scenario we would say let’s put this all on hold, and everyone stays away happily and nothing changes for the worse, and we pick it up perhaps when everyone is stronger. But status quos are not status quos and people know that. They either get better – or more commonly – they actually get worse because they are left neglected. I fear that this status quo, over the next 10 or 11 months if there isn’t some very significant policy activity, will deteriorate into violence.
Issue # 208
Dennis Ross, who served as lead Mideast negotiator for close to a decade, is uncharacteristically optimistic about the chances for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement in the not-so-distant future.
Writing in the Washington Post, Ross described a conference on the peace process he just attended in Gaza City. Ross was invited to speak about the future of the peace process to an audience of 200 Palestinians - mostly from the mainstream but also representatives of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Ross told his audience that the United States was ready to assist Palestinians in establishing their state and ending the Israeli occupation but that they would have to take responsibility for ending the violence against Israel.
By Ross's own account, there was not much new in what he told the
Palestinians: end terrorism and you'll get your state. And Ross was not the only speaker to make that point. "When I declared that there would be no Palestinian state born of violence - with the leading proponents of that violence sitting there - several Palestinians responded by saying that violence was a mistake and nothing would be achieved by it."
Ross was surprised by the response to these comments. "What struck me about these comments was that there was no hesitancy to make them. With the opposition sitting there, with the entire conference being conducted in Arabic and televised throughout the Middle East, declaring that violence against the Israelis was wrong bore no stigma and apparently little risk. Declaring that Palestinians had responsibilities to fulfill was also treated as legitimate, not sacrilegious."
It is rather remarkable and, one might add, counter-intuitive. The collapse of Oslo followed by the four-plus years of violence that followed might have been expected to permanently radicalize Palestinian opinion. The Palestinians have lost 3500 men, women and children during the past four years and such losses do not necessarily produce a conciliatory attitude. In fact, the opposite is often true. Sacrifice often fuels further Nationalistic violence.
That appears not to have happened with the Palestinians. Rather than deciding that a failed policy of violence justified more violence, they seem to have decided to pursue their goals through political means. That is what Mahmoud Abbas's (Abu Mazen's) Presidential candidacy is all about. He is not giving up on Palestinian national goals (i.e. a state in the West Bank and Gaza and some form of Palestinian "return"). He is simply foreswearing violence as a means of achieving those goals.
Fortunately, the Israelis seem to be moving in the same direction. Like the Palestinians, they might have been radicalized by the violence of the intifada and its thousand dead. Like the Palestinians, they initially moved in that direction. But today, like the Palestinians, they want to reach an accommodation with the other side.
The biggest obstacle to progress remains terrorism and, on that score, Abu Mazen has been sending some mixed signals - not particularly surprising during a political campaign. He says he opposes violence but then says that he has no intention of rooting out those who engage in it. That is politics. Abu Mazen could simply not be elected if he ran on a pledge to arrest his fellow Palestinians.
But after January 9th, assuming he is elected President, tolerance of terrorism in any form would doom his efforts to achieve both peace and a Palestinian state.
Fortunately, the Bush roadmap shows the way for both sides to ensure that that the issue of terrorism (not to mention terrorism itself) is not permitted to destroy the chances for peace in 2005 as it so often has in the past. In the past, an initiative would be announced requiring action by both sides, a terrorist act would occur, Israel would declare that it will not fulfill its obligations until the Palestinians root out the terrorists, the Palestinians would throw up their hands and say they are too weak to confront the terrorists and....the initiative would die.
As conceived, the road map - which the President says he is ready to implement - gets around this problem by requiring Palestinians and Israelis to act in simultaneity. Palestinians have to take on the terrorists and, at the same time, Israel must fulfill its obligations. This is the brilliance of the roadmap.
Palestinians must end anti-Israel violence, while at the same time Israelis must pull back from areas reoccupied during the intifada and freeze settlements. Neither side can refuse to meet its obligations by claiming that the other has not acted.
The roadmap then allows Abu Mazen to demonstrate instant benefits to his people for ending violence while Sharon is instantly rewarded for dismantling illegal settlements and freezing the rest. And neither side can point to the other as an excuse not to fulfill its obligations.
This is important to remember. Those who demand that Palestinians do this, that, and the other thing, prior to Israel fulfilling its obligations are ignoring the roadmap. Neither side need do anything first; each side must act in parallel with the other.
For over four years, Israelis and Palestinians have been playing a game of "gotcha" with the other. Rather than work together to achieve an agreement, each has devoted itself to find fault in the other.
That has to change. Certainly the usual suspects will play their usual games. For some, finger-pointing and name-calling is the preferred response to the "threat" posed by negotiations and diplomacy. Fortunately, most Jews and Palestinians want something more for their people. They want an end to violence and the beginning of hope.
We are on the brink.
MJ Rosenberg (email: mj847@aol.com), Director of Policy Analysis for Israel Policy Forum, is a long time Capitol Hill staffer and former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report. If you have colleagues or friends who would appreciate receiving this weekly letter, send an e-mail to ipfdc@ipforumdc.org.
The views expressed in IPF Friday are those of MJ Rosenberg and not necessarily of Israel Policy Forum.